Blast from the Past #5

With all the talk, in the previous post, about the foundation wall of the old outbuilding I though I'd do another 'Blast from the Past' post. This one will be about that nasty outbuilding.

I don't even know were, or how, to begin to describe this building. Have you ever seen the movie 'Ghost Ship' or 'Raise the Titanic'? You know how the interiors were on these ships (?) - filled with rotting crap and the whole thing was wet and gooey? Well, that's what it was like in the building. There were also cobwebs everywhere.

No one wanted to go inside. Even during the auction people just sort of looked in the door (you could barely open it) and backed away.

You wouldn't believe the junk stored in this thing. Mounds and mounds of rotting, gooey, crap stacked to the rafters. To give you an idea there were dozens and dozens of those Styrofoam mashed-potato containers from KFC. There were also dozens of bags (large dog food type) of corn cobs (just the cobs). There was no rhyme or reason fo keep any of this.

Now, in order to get rid of the building, everything that could not be burned had to be removed. This took about a week to do. We had to were masks, gloves, old clothes and such just to keep from getting the gooey slime off of us. When we were finished we even burned the stuff we wore.

With all this done the building could finally come down.

BTW - the pictures were taken May 25th 2001.

This is the back of the building. See the mold growing up the side?!

Right now the backhoe is moving some cast iron door parts to get them out of the way. We have no idea where these cast iron lentils and columns came from but think they might have come from an old building in town that blew up in the 40s.

The guy who tore it down for us is an old family friend. The skinny guy is his youngest kid.

If you look right behind me you can see the beginnings of our current burn pit. At this time we had a larger one about 30' to the rear of where the camera was to get this pic.

These are the two top lintels.

Look at the left end of the one on the ground. That black smudgy area is the edge of the old burn pit.

To get the party started, the building was whacked.

This was done to test how stable the building was...it wasn't.

The walls were nothing but chicken-wire with adobe plaster on one side and tar-paper on the other.

The east end of the building caved in.

There was a large, meat-locker type door here on rollers. I guess this is where the large stuff was brought in. The door itself is the slab you can see at the base of the tree. It's about 3" thick and covered in metal.

The part that is still standing, to the left of the picture, is the greenhouse type porch added to the front of the building. I'm still kicking myself for not getting pictures of it.

2/3rds of the building is now smashed. The part that's left is the west end.





Okay, this picture should have been before the previous one. This is the halfway point.




Here's an 'okay' shot of the greenhouse porch that was on the front.






The organ on the trailer is a Halloween prop I was getting ready to move out of the way.

Geeze...you'd think I could have organized these pictures better!

After the building was down, and most of it gone, Lacey (our 1st Papillon dog) and Spartacus the cat, were going nuts around this little pile of debris.

We had no clue what they were all excited over, but after about 30 minutes or so I went over to check it out.

They seemed really interested in the slab of adobe plaster (at the 45 degree angle in the picture). So I decided to help them out and flipped it over for them.

Here is what we found.

Do you see it?!

It's the only living one we have found since living here.

BTW - the slab it's next to is the meat-locker door.

Well, till next time...

Cheers!
Larry ~